ClickBank Product Selection

You should have a shortlist now of between 10 and 20 products. If not — go back and read the section on ClickBank market research.

Remember — you must follow along if you hope to make any money with this. I don't mean "reading along" either — I mean get your bloody hands dirty and join in.

After doing some market research — I created a quick shortlist of 15 products that I thought seemed worth promoting — or at least taking a closer look at.

Again — don't worry about hitting a "home run" right now. You are looking for candidates.

When I was making my shortlist — I was looking for products that had a decent "direct response" type sales process. I also included a little checklist of points I look for:

• classic direct response sales page
• prehead
• headline
• subhead
• benefit based copy
• use of bullet points
• call to action
• name squeeze page
• autoresponder sequence
• free report giveaway

This list is by no means exhaustive.

What's more, in some markets (PSP, iPods, Ring Tones, etc…) you won't normally see the classic direct-response sales letter. Some markets are just different — so use your own judgment, common sense and that plain ol "gut feeling".

Moving on…

I now need to choose a product and market to use for this case study.

I use a number of tools to help me out. Some are free — some aren't. The particular "paid tool" that I like using is CBEngine PRO. I find it really helpful when "looking" for a product to promote. It's also really inexpensive. (Pro membership will set you back $39.95 for a year.)

What I like about CBEngine PRO is using it's various live reports to find products — and uncover those gold nuggets.

Reports include Brand New, Re-listed, Removed, CB Insider and Best Gains:

As you can see CBEngine PRO coughs up a nice spread of data. In particular the "Movers & Shakers" report. (The last image above.)

You'll see that I've circled in red one particular product that caught my eye. It's shooting up the ClickBank rankings. I took quick look at the sales letter.

It's pretty good (in IE) but it all falls apart in Firefox. There seems to be potential there. It could be one of those products that work very well if you re-wrote the copy. (Even verbatim, but with HTML/CSS that doesn't break.)

What's this about Firefox and the way pages look?

Here's the thing — not all HTML looks the same on every browser or every computer. So a smart marketer wants to check at least two things:

• Does the sales page look good in both Internet Explorer and Firefox?
• Does the sales page look ok for people with 800×600 screens, 1024×768 screens, and 1280×1024 screens?

Most Internet marketers have much more hardware and screen resolution than the average web surfer.

Nearly a quarter of all web users have an 800×600 screen. More than 30% of all visitors use Firefox. You want to make sure that anything you are promoting looks presentable.

Here's a little tip! Use Browsershots. It's an online tool that'll check browser compatibility — and run cross platform browser tests. I love this tool!

ClickBank Product Selection

Once I have already found a product that I want to promote — I'll run it through CBTrends. (It's a free tool.)

I've never promoted any of the 15 products on my shortlist in the past. The market that kinda stands out for me is World of Warcraft.

I've never played Warcraft before. I don't know the language used in this market. I'll be approaching it as a total "outsider". This should be interesting and fun.

Searching for "warcraft" on the ClickBank Marketplace produces this list…

Two of these products are on my shortlist from yesterday. What I'm going to do is run a few of them through CBTrends.

You simply get the vendor ID first — then paste it into the Vendor ID field and click "Get Performance Trends".

Here are the performance graphs…

This is for position #1: World of Warcraft WoW Joanas Horde Guide

This is for position #2: World of Warcraft Guide Kopps 1-60

This is for position #4: World of Warcraft Cash Creating Guide

This is for position #5: World of Warcraft Mastery

That's a lot of graphs. What do these pictures mean?

For each product (vendor ID) I enter in — we're looking at the popularity of the product over time and the gravity over time.

If a product is gaining in popularity we'll see a graph that curves downward — like with World of Warcraft Guide Kopps 1-60.

One thing to remember is that CBTrends only shows graphs over a three month time period.

So you could be looking at a product that is popular and has basically stayed that way for all three months. In this case — the popularity graph would be pretty flat. So you have to look at the numbers and not just the line.

One thing is for certain — a popularity line that is moving upwards means the product is losing popularity.

The graph of gravity is basically showing us how many affiliates are successful selling the product.

Here you want a basically flat line or a line that trends up because high gravity is generally a good thing.

Yes, there are "diamonds in the rough" — products that people aren't promoting but are perfectly fine products if a little marketing was applied. But why struggle?

Make it easy on yourself and pick products with good gravity compared to their competition.

Here's another thing to watch out for — scale. CBTrends does not use the same scale for the Y axis all the time. Look at the popularity chart for Product #2 and Product #4.

Product #2 has a popularity rating from 101 down to 13; Product #4 goes between 79 and 35. You really have to know the range that is being shown in order to make an accurate assessment of popularity and gravity of products competing with one another.

Hmmm … World of Warcraft Mastery was actually on my shortlist — but judging from the above performance graph — I'm going to replace it with World of Warcraft Cash Creating Guide. (Which is in position 4.)

The first three graphs look perfect. I can see that these products are selling. Of course, I don't know the buying behavior of this market or the demographics — which is important to know.

AdWords Research — Looking for Spending Clues

A quick search on Google reveals quite a few paid ads for WoW guides being sold.

What's more — both of the top two sponsored listings are for ClickBank products — both of which are on my list. ;-)

Here's the sidebar of ads. (Ads down the right-hand side of the page.)

Look familiar?

So judging from ClickBank performance trends — and verification that advertisers are spending money on AdWords advertising — it would "seem" as if there is a market for this product along with buyers.

As mentioned yesterday — I like to also chose a market that has quite a few competing products. That way I can split-test them to find the one that makes me the most money on the front end … and still offers me backend opportunities down the line.

You now need to do the SAME!

Narrow down your shortlist to one market and a primary product. And don't chose the same one as me, either — because I'll then have to "take you out"! ;-)

2009 Update: Because I did this case study years ago — back in December 2006 — feel free to run a campaign in the same niche. Even now in 2009 — the World of Warcraft market on ClickBank seems to be more active then ever.

World of Warcraft — But What About Promoting Internet Marketing Products?

This may come as a shock to you — but there is life outside of Internet marketing. Every day, ClickBank processes millions of dollars in orders for people looking to cure anxiety, deal with acne, and lose weight.

People buy mp3 download memberships from ClickBank and eBooks of all kinds. There is tons of money to be make outside of the "make money" niche.

I also have a little "gut feeling" about the gaming market so I am going with it.

Gut feel?

Are you wondering how you are going to build a business based on gut feel? Calm down a bit. Remember — we didn't just go on our gut.

We looked at the trends of those products. We evaluated their sales process. And we checked for competition in that niche. Gut feel counts. But it's just one component of picking a product.

Where Am I? Where are You?

Ok, after all this analysis I've decided to promote both World Of Warcraft WoW Jonas Horde Guide (which is in position 1) and World Of Warcraft Cash Creating Guide (which is in position 4).

They both have good graphs and trends and I like their sales copy better than the other products that are performing well.

One quick thing — the affiliate commission for both is less than $20. I'd prefer if it was higher.

Why?

Simple.

In order to turn a profit I have to spend less than $20 in pay-per-click costs. So if my average cost per click (CPC) is $0.10 — I have to convert better than 1 in 200 in order to make money.

If you haven't guessed — we aren't doing this out of the kindness of our hearts. We are in it for the money and looking "at the numbers" is an important thing.

Sometimes it's ok if I don't make money on the initial product promotion. Does that sound strange? It shouldn't.

If my goal is to build a list and sell products on the "back end" through an autoresponder sequence then I very well may accept a negative performing PPC campaign if I am confident on my ability to convert people on my email list to one or more back end products.

The thing is — you have to have a plan. Going into PPC bidding and not having a goal of making a profit — or breaking even — or selling through your autoresponder isn't acceptable.

Have a plan!

Let's continue to keyword research and keyword grouping…

• Introduction
• ClickBank Market Research
• ClickBank Product Selection
• Keyword Research
• Landing Pages
• Testing and Tracking
• Email Marketing
• AdWords Traffic
• Analyzing Data